Up until now, most of the media coverage of illegal aliens has concentrated
on draining welfare funds, creating unemployment, and not paying taxes
into a system from which they benefit. To receive welfare, proof of
citizenship is required, which the illegal alien does not have, and
the illegal alien is not causing unemployment since the state has tried
to get the urban poor to take the jobs in the fields, and failed. The
urban poor could make more on welfare and unemployment than accepting
these jobs. Also, not many people would accept below minimum wage, long
hours, or nonappealing jobs.

Most employers, therefore, benefit from illegal aliens in that they
can demand more for less; they also use threats of calling the border
patrol to keep workers under extreme working conditions. An example
of this inhuman profiteering is Senator Barry Goldwater's brother, Robert,
who has been hiring illegal aliens for more than a decade. After he
paid over $100 to have them smuggled in, he then paid them as little
as $5 for a dawn-to-dusk work day. Their living conditions were horrible,
and they lived like rats in homes made of crates. Even though they were
required to pay taxes, they were unable to collect benefits from welfare
or unemployment.

Ironically, millions of dollars are being spent to apprehend, detain,
and repatriate illegal aliens, however, three times as many people continue
to get through the security barriers than are returned or detained.
The media tells only one side of the story of the illegal aliens and
ignores the other side of this story; this is why this story has been
nominated as one of the "ten best censored stories for 1977."

SOURCES:

New West, "California's Illegal Aliens, They Give More Than They
Take," p. 26, also "How Illegal Aliens Pay as They Go,"
p. 34; by Jonathan Kirsch and Anthony Cook, May 23, 1977.

In These Times, "Illegal Aliens the New Scapegoat," June
1-7, 1977,p.6.